Temu and Shein’s end confirmed in the U.S.: how it affects your next purchases

Both online sales platforms Temu (a marketplace offering a wide variety of heavily discounted consumer goods, ranging from fashion and home décor to electronics and beauty products) and fast fashion retailer Shein are no longer shipping goods from China to the USA.

Based in China both operations, focused on offering very low prices by allowing China-based vendors to sell directly to customers, cutting out intermediaries which led to significantly cheaper products compared to traditional retailers.

Tariffs have played an obvious role in the steps but end of the de minimis rule, the trade policy which permitted goods to be imported without paying taxes if their value was under $800.

With the term “de minimis” being Latin for “too small to be meaningful or taken into consideration.

Temu reacts

Instead of offering American consumers a wide range of heavily discounted goods from China, the company is now selling items shipped from warehouses based in the U.S.

“Temu’s pricing for U.S. consumers remains unchanged as the platform transitions to a local fulfillment model,” the company said in a statement to USA TODAY. “All sales in the U.S. are now handled by locally based sellers, with orders fulfilled from within the country.”

Ads vanish

Both Shein and Temu were two of the biggest advertisers on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google. In 2023 alone, they spent $2 billion on Meta and $3 billion on marketing in general.

One week after the rule ended, the advertisements disappeared with the Shein and Temu apps disappearing from the upper ends of the charts reflecting a shift in consumer perception.

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